One Facebook fan said he felt the show was a lot crisper than the previous night.

Another person had some fashion advice for Mulligan: "Either wear a tie with [your] top button done up - properly - or follow Greg Boyed's lead and not wear a tie. A tie with the top button undone just looks scruffy."

Ratings for Monday's debut show a solid but unspectacular first night audience, according to overnight ratings supplied by NielsenTAM people meters. Estimates for the new programme were similar to those for Close Up this time last year.

Up to 497,000 tuned into Seven Sharp on the first night, while 242,800 watched TV3 rival Campbell Live.

Seven Sharp maintained Close Up's lead over Campbell.

With heavy promotion combining with secrecy over its format, competitors at TV3 and Prime TV said they expected a lot of people would be trying out the new show.

They would be watching second night ratings very closely to see if they held up, they said.

The TV2 soap Shortland Street maintained its dominance of the 7pm timeslot, and picked up two ratings points in its second half, while Seven Sharp lost one ratings point.

Ratings in the early evening time slot are always low this time of the year with good weather drawing people outside.

But problems at the start also risk burning off the new, younger viewers TVNZ wants to attract to the show.

Among people aged 25-54 years, Seven Sharp scored 17 per cent of the TV audience watching at the time, compared to 12.3 per cent for Campbell Live and 45.5 per cent for Shortland Street.

Last night's show started off with the same sort of satirical jokes from the previous night.

The stories were again a mix of the serious and not so serious, with the first item looking at the problem of poisoned drinks in Bali. The second story focused on the debate about nudists being out in public and appeared to cut it a little too close in some of the shots.